Re: cross-fs copy support

[Andreas Dilger <adilger@dilger.ca>]

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\x1d\b\x1d\x1dOn Oct 1, 2018, at 9:49 AM, Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 10/1/18 9:48 AM, Qu Wenruo wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 2018/10/1 下午10:32, Joshi wrote:
>>> I was wondering about the cross-fs copy through copy_file_range.
>> 
>> The term "cross-fs" looks pretty confusing.
>> 
>> If you mean "cross-subvolume", then it should work without problem in btrfs.
>> 
>> If you mean reflink across two different file systems (not matter the
>> same fs type or not).
>> Then it's impossible to work.
> 
> I believe Joshi is talking about vfs_copy_file_range() not
> vfs_clone_file range(), although _copy_ does call _clone_ if it can.
> 
>> Reflink (clone_file_range) works by inserting data pointers into the
>> filesystem other than really copying the data.
>> Thus if the source is outside of the fs, it's really impossible to work,
>> as the source pointer/data is completely out of control of the dest fs.
> 
> Yes, I would expect there to be problems with his modified kernel
> for a filesystem that supports clone_file_range, because
> vfs_copy_file_range() will clone if possible, and this should fail across
> filesystems.
> 
> In general, though, I don't know for sure why we don't fall back to
> do_splice_direct() across filesystems, although the filesystems that
> implement their own ->copy_file_range ops may have their own,
> further restrictions within their implementations.
> 
> This call /is/ documented in the manpage as only being valid for
> files on the same filesystem, though:
> http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/copy_file_range.2.html

There was a patch to allow cross-mount copy for NFS, but it hasn't landed
yet.

Cheers, Andreas






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